


Before and After and Forever

by ameliajean



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-03
Updated: 2012-02-03
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:19:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliajean/pseuds/ameliajean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John does not belong to the colorless world in which Sherlock no longer exists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before and After and Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Reichenbach.

The mid-afternoon sky is a dreary, thick layer of grey upon darker greys until one's eye reaches the jagged edge of a tall edifice and its small blotches of color manage to pull the layers apart. The state of the weather is largely immaterial (whether it be blue sky, white clouds, green leaves turning orange beneath a heavy wind) because the deep burgundy of Sherlock Holmes' blood trickling from the man's skull to a puddle on the footpath is the last color he is able to register. Trails of condensation scatter across the clean glass of the cab window as John's line of sight both takes in and immediately rejects the familiar landscape of the city in which he lives.

_Lived._

This isn't living, such as it were. He manages to make it down to the grocery once per week, he does his washing on a semi-regular basis, and Mrs. Hudson is kind enough to take care of trivialities such as making tea in the afternoon and goading him into eating, at the very least, a biscuit or two. One must eat to live. One cannot subsist on whisky alone, and yet, John believes that he very well could if Lestrade and Molly and Mycroft would be so kind as to bugger off and allow him to test the hypothesis.

There is no calendar either physical or imagined to which John subscribes anymore. There are moments that crystalise like the deep yellow of amber into the respiratory system of an insect and moments that halt time altogether as if he'd stepped in front of a bus without the aid of the world's only Consulting Detective to pull him out of its path.

There are moments that bring him to his knees, to the worn rug where Sherlock used to pace with hands clasped behind him, and moments where John feels as if his trachea has caught fire because something like a scratch on the kitchen table brings back everything he's tried to suppress for days and days and days. He knows only of the outside world what he can see from the window, from the desk, where he sits in protest because he _cannot_ stand to look at that chair for another moment.

John Watson belongs to no person, no geographic location, no place in time unless it is Sherlock, and Baker Street, and so _many_ moments ago when the greatest weight on his heart was the way Sherlock would stare so intently when he thought John was busy blogging or dealing with the tedium of social graces.

John Watson belongs to the world's only Consulting Detective; fully, wholly, with every fibre of his being. He does not know how to live in a world to which he does not belong, and can no longer function in this paradoxical state. Mrs. Hudson will tell him a thousand times over to walk in the park, to have a pint with an old friend, and yet, he sits barefoot at the desk just to feel the same patch of floor on his skin that Sherlock once felt. _Before_.

Before the fall.

A life after, beyond, above this, _this_ , is unfathomable. John Watson continues to breathe inasmuch as he will allow himself to do so; he eats enough, drinks enough, moves enough to stay alive, and only just. To live, by its barest definition, is his only mode of functioning. He no longer feels the scalding tea on his tongue and the tiny bumps it creates, the grocery bags in his hands, the scratch of cotton against his cheek as sleep begs to encroach upon his meager existence; his only respite. Sleep, and sleep, and it will not come but for the grace of narcotics.

The dreams are ever lucid, ever unchanging. It is always the collar turned to the wind; the cerulean blue scarf pulled hastily away, the porcelain white flesh flushed with blood in the silent morning air. It is the only moment that color seeps into John's vision; it is the only breath of _life_ he is allowed and so he fights against every slice of sunlight to stay in this state of make believe.

Eventually, he purchases thicker curtains and takes to sleeping all hours of the day. Nothing wakes him save for the pangs of hunger and necessity of padding down the hallway, barefoot, to the toilet. Always barefoot, always in the pajamas two sizes too big, always with the crushing weight of _awake_ laid across his chest.

John never allows himself to enter the main room after the sun dips below the horizon. To be there, in the dark, amongst Sherlock's belongings – it is nearly too much to do so with the aid of daylight. It is nearly too much to do so at all.  But he will not, will _never_ vacate their home to find a new flat. It is their home. It remains so, even as things that John finds too vibrant to touch begin to collect dust and match all of the other colorless things in his world.

The world to which he does not belong.

This edict begins to poke at him; lightly at first, and then harder, painful, sharp like the tines of whatever instrument is lodged between his sternum and heart. It begins to resonate with the blossoming realization that the syntax has been faulty all along: it is not his to inhabit. It is not his at all.

Out. Away.

He begins to formulate a plan and smiles sickly when it coalesces. He tells no one but the empty flat, as he takes his tea or stares blankly at the empty page of the only document he's opened in weeks and weeks and weeks. Sherlock's possessions, their lack of color, and the world the madman created before outstretching his arms and pulling it down with him like the curtain at the conclusion of _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ : this is what he has left. He speaks to them as if they can listen.

The dreams come, more vivid than ever, and he wakes in sweat-soaked sheets with a thrumming of blood through his ears when the coat and scarf and other articles of Sherlock's attire begin to disappear as well. He tries well and truly never to wake and is entirely convinced that he can will himself to sleep for years and years and years.

And forever.

He will sleep with Sherlock, in a world to which he belongs, and a palette of color more beautiful than this drab world could possibly know will paint every inch of this imagined paradise. Things will return to their original state, before the lack of time and space and every goddamned thing in-between. Things will become as they were.

Before the fall. 

The last instance in which John plans to be awake finds him sitting at the foot of their bed, _their bed_ , always theirs regardless of its inhabitants, and running the pad of his thumb over the keyboard of his rarely-used mobile.  The last message John ever received from his Consulting Detective lies behind the glowing screen. Having read it fifty times per day for as long as he can remember now, can't remember anything before this except the watery blue of Sherlock's eyes when dreams allow him this small pleasure, or the way the man reached his hand into the air _just so_ in his final moments, as if to ask for help, for absolution, for-

Suddenly, instantly, his plan to follow Sherlock into forever-sleep (because he's not _dead_ , he's not, _not_ ) seems utterly dull. As grey as the sky. As grey as the tin of biscuits on the table and the deerstalker affixed to the wall and every other bloody implement of torture residing in that flat. Suddenly, it is no longer physically possible for John to reside in a world to which he does not belong because every atom in his body seems as if it will pull apart from every other atom and split him into pieces.

It is time to leave.

He calmly places the mobile on his bed and stands to exit the room. In the hallway moments later, and the kitchen next, John casts his gaze over the countertops. Steel and sharp and all the instruments necessary to flood the sky with every shade of blue. 

Eyes.

Scarf.

It is enough to propel him forward.

With one foot flat on the floor and the other setting him in motion, John's ears deceive him.

"Please," he hears, and shakes the noise from his head.

John reaches for the wooden block with its protruding black handles and hears it again. 

"Please, no, God," again and again, "please, stop."

And four fingers curl around John's bicep, a thumb encircling it fully -- the cold, slender digits of his tormentor. They cannot be. They cannot be, in this world, this grey, this lack of life. It is no longer his or Sherlock's or blue or green or anything but a reminder of where he _does not belong_.

"John," he speaks, slowly, with immense measure.

A sound becomes lodged in John's throat, like the noise he dreamt of making in his days and nights of slumber, a private sound choked with uncertainty and then blinding clarity.

He turns in one quick motion, the wooden block forgotten. The blood drains from his face and he stumbles backward, spine knocking against the counter, face aghast. The deep forever-sleep of whisky and the glass vials John found beneath the floorboards seem so very far away, ever disappearing, fading into the grey and darker grey without the punctuation of color.

This is wrong. This is wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

"You – you cannot _be_ here," John manages to speak, unevenly, knuckles white as they prop his body against the cabinets.

Sherlock takes a step closer. "Please, let me-"

"This isn't, this… isn't for us," and it becomes apparent that John has lost his grasp of reality.

"I am here, John. I am flesh and bone. I am… sorry."

A tangle of black curls obscures the flash of compassion in Sherlock Holmes' eyes, the deepest pools of blue, the objects around which John Watson intends to build an entire world. An entire world of blue just for his happiness. For his sanity.

"You can't be sorry," John reasons, "because you cannot _be_."

"I am well and truly sorry to have hurt you so, John. Please believe me that I would never do so unless absolutely-"

"Stop. No. No more, not at all."

Sherlock straightens his posture and inhales sharply as if to signify a complete change of tactic. He can see the man's striking new facial features in this low light, now; the sunkenness of his cheeks, the bags beneath his eyes, the thin lines of regret and hurt and anger pulled tight at the corners of his lips.

"Tell me. Tell me what I can do, John."

"Go," he says firmly. "Go back, to the color, to the place and time, please." 

"Help me understand-" 

"I can't be here," John laughs quickly, humorlessly, and lowers his voice. "You can't be here."

"Then what shall I do?" Sherlock's voice deepens, widens, creates an entire valley into which they could both fall if either of them peers over the edge and into the void. "Tell me and I shall do it." 

John's chin falls to his chest and he begins to sob.

Sherlock pulls a knife from the block and lays the cool metal against his wrist. The air is sucked from the room as if each of them has taken too many breaths and held them indefinitely.

"If this is what will right your world, John Watson, I shall leave it."

The doctor's knees buckle and he is a mess; a jumbled pile of limbs. The thought of more burgundy, Sherlock's, on their kitchen floor, is enough to snap him right back into reality. Everything remains grey as ever, as it always was, but the form hovering above him is solid. It is real. He is real. 

"Do take me with you," John pleads, but without the strength or vigor that might imply earnest desire. "Or never leave again, at all."

Sherlock discards the knife and bends at aching joints to gather the other man into his arms. They march wordlessly to John's bedroom, John's bed, always theirs, _theirs_ -

He lays him on the side closest to the door and pulls a blanket over cool skin. A forgotten mobile slides to the floor and settles with a thud. The curtains are drawn and the room is pitch black; it is evident that this is not the world in which Sherlock left his doctor.

It is not the same at all.

When John wakes, the light is so bright it disorients him momentarily. Sherlock has made a proper breakfast and a freshly laundered jumper sits folded atop a crisp pair of slacks at the foot of the bed. Slowly, John's eyes adjust to the sunlight's encroaching rays. Outside the window, billowing white clouds clump together amidst a backdrop of stunning blue atmosphere.

"Why is the sky blue?" John wonders aloud, believing that the smartest and best and only Consulting Detective will surely know the answer.

Sherlock's lips form a curious smile, for a moment, just a moment, and then, "the earth's atmosphere is composed of gases through which light's wavelengths pass. The longer ones are the reds, the yellows, what have you. The shorter wavelengths are absorbed and scatter to project… blue."

John shakes his head. "It is blue because you make it so, Sherlock."

A hint of pink brightens Sherlock's cheekbones and it is gone as soon as it came. John sees it with utter clarity, and the golden yellow of the butter on his toast, the beige and forest green of his jumper, the jet-black mess of hair on the other man's head. It is all high resolution and vibrant as the dreams that did not come last night.

"I want to walk in the park today," Sherlock announces brusquely, as if someone has shaken him by the shoulders. "Please do eat something and get dressed."

They walk for twenty-eight minutes, sit on the bench in silence for twelve, and walk again for nineteen. Somewhere beneath leaves nearly dripping with green, Sherlock pulls his doctor so their bodies are flush and holds him there, tight, tight, tight enough to assure John that his feet are planted on solid earth. The ghost of his lips, dry and full, finds the gentle curve of John's jaw, and with hands tangled at their sides, finally, finally John's lips. It is before the fall, and after, and everything all at once.

Contact.

Color.

The world spins on its axis again. It is righted. It is theirs.

They do not speak of morbid, maudlin, morose things. That will come later, with explanations and more apologies and eight limbs in a bed barely big enough for two. The pain in John's chest will ease with time, in moments, days, weeks, years _together_.

The new spring is breathtaking, almost literally, and seeps into their bones as if to refresh their entire existence.

The gorgeous weather is incidental to John's vastly improved mood.


End file.
